Modi's cabinet

Modi's cabinet

Narendra Modi's council of ministers is the leanest ever with 44 members.

India’s next Home Minister Rajnath Singh, president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has taken oath as a cabinet minister immediately after Modi.

Next up was Sushma Swaraj who will be External Affairs minister. She will be assisted by former Army Chief General VK Singh as minister of state. The General, who is now the BJP's Ghaziabad lawmaker, will also have independent charge of North East affairs, reports NDTV.

Arun Jaitley will be Finance Minister and will also hold additional charge of Defence. He will be assisted in the Defence ministry by Gurgaon lawmaker, recently imported by the BJP from the Congress, Rao Inderjit Singh as minister of state. Singh will also have independent charge of statistic and planning.

Former BJP chief Nitin Gadkari is expected to land a mega Transport ministry. Sadanand Gowda will have charge of Railways.

Ravi Shankar Prasad is tipped to be Law minister and also have charge of Telecom. Prakash Javadekar, senior BJP spokesperson, will be Information and Broadcasting Minister and will also head environment.

Siti Irani, 38, who took on Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi in a spirited contest in Amethi in the general election, is going to be Human Resource Development minister.

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Former BJP chief Venkaiah Naidu will be Parliamentary Affairs Minister. Anant Kumar will be hold the chemical and fertiliser ministry.

Maneka Gandhi will be Union Minister for women and child development. Najma Heptullah will have charge of minority affairs. Uma Bharti will be Union Minister for water resources.

Jual Oram will be cabinet minister for tribal affairs and Radha Mohan Singh a Bihar BJP leader will hold the key portfolio of agricultural.

BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman will be the new Commerce Minister with independent charge. BJP Rajya Sabha member Piyush Goel will be Power and Coal minister with independent charge. Party general secretary Dharmendra Pradhan will have independent charge of the high-profile Oil Ministry.

Leaders of BJP's allies in the NDA are being sworn in too. Bihar leader Ram Vilas Paswan will have charge of food and civil supplies and consumer affairs; Akali leader Harsiat Kaur will be Food processing minister, and the TDP's Ashok Gajapathy Raju will be civil aviation minister.